You are definately on the money 1200rally. You want to achieve a shorter gear change by moving the fulcrum point on the gear lever.

In my opinion there is no advantage gained by shortening the length of the stick, as the end result is that the driver will have to reach further from the steering wheel to change gears. Shortening the stick could considered a quick fix.
Ideally you would want the the gear stick close to the steering wheel ( to reduce time taken to move your hand) in congunction with a short "throw" between gears (achieved but moving the fulcrum point of the gear stick.

Just my thoughts.

it all depends how much cam lift you have, as well as valve duration. Most of the motors i have assembled, i have had to put fly cuts in the piston tops.

Some of the little dattos were fitted with Borg Warner diffs from the factory, which have a diff cover plate at the rear.. They dont have pull out centres ( from the front) rather the gears are assembled from the back via the cover plate.

Yes, i am interested
I am also located in sydney

I have had great success using top and bottom tanks (the plumbing is in the right place) from a holden gemini and had a 3 core, core fitted. The standard 2 core works quite will though.

take the bearing out go to a bearing supplier (cbc bearings maybe) there are lots out there. If you give them a sample they should be able to match it up with something.

i would be cautious using 195/50/15's on a 7 inch wide rim as the tyre is rated for 6 inch (6.5 inch absolute max) wide rims.

You can buy them in australia for around $220 Australian (although they are not genuine nissan manifolds)

quite a bit of machining. the rotors are mounted to the back of vanette hubs as they have the correct offset, 4 stud and use the same wheel bearings ( but not oil seal). make sure the stuts are "armstrong" as they have the larger stub axle. (It should be stamped on the strut tube).
A bracket needs to be made to mount the calipers (I used 8mm, grade 250 plate steel) as the strut mounting points are 90mm centre to centre and the calipers mounting points are 100mm centre to centre. As well as using high tensile (8.8) bolts.

It is not as simple as bolting it straight up. You need a shortened tail shaft made up, original crossmember mounts have to come out and modify the thrust bearing race. I opted to use a different clutch (4 puck ceramic button) other than the one supplied by dellow.
But at the end of the day i did the sums and the toyota box better suited my needs, In my opinion better constructed and easily maintained (being a split case type box).